Belief in the Impossible

By: Rich Eagles and Mike Keesey, DuPont Sustainable Solutions

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it
easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the
power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an
opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is
potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

–Muhammad Ali

Thirty hours and 40 minutes following the launch of the Apollo 13
mission to the moon, a loud bang was heard. The rupturing of an oxygen
tank would drive NASA to abort the moon landing and redirect all of
its resources to bring the astronauts home safely. Although NASA had
planned for many potential hazards, the general prognosis of an
in-flight issue such as this was not positive. Yet, as each and every
issue came up, the teams of engineers, flight controllers, and
astronauts worked to ensure that they could return home safely.

Shortly after the explosion, one of the critical issues identified
was related to dangerous levels of CO2 in the cabin. The Lunar Module
had two round filters designed to remove CO2 for two individuals for
two days. Unfortunately, this cabin now housed all three astronauts
and needed to be able to remove CO2 for a total of four days. There
was a similar type of filtration mechanism on the Command Module, but
the filters themselves were square, as opposed to round. As CO2 levels
rose to unsafe limits, there was limited time to literally fit a
square peg in a round hole.

The scene was tense. Engineers on the ground were asked to perform
the impossible. They were limited to what could be salvaged on
board–space suits, hoses, pieces of plastic, duct tape–and they had to
design and communicate the solution before the crew began suffering
the effects of insufficient air.

The ingenuity of these engineers, and the subsequent challenges they
all overcame, tell us something particularly poignant about the drive
for safety and the commitment to bringing everyone home safely. The
assumption after the explosion was that the crew would not likely
live. The attitude of the individuals, their actions, and their belief
told another story.

Failure was not an option. These individuals could be saved.¹

All Injuries are Preventable

A fundamental tenet of organizations that have strong safety
programs and performance is an underlying belief that all injuries are
preventable. Since 1999, the DuPont Safety Perception Survey™ has
helped organizations evaluate employees’ perceptions of their safety
programs and to identify behaviors, attitudes and other factors that
can derail a safety program. An extensive database of two million
responses, across a variety of industries, has been developed. Among
companies participating in the DuPont Safety Perception Survey™ with
total recordable rates below 1, lost workday injury frequency rate
below 0.25, and zero contractor or employee fatalities in the previous
five years, 94 percent of their employees believed that every injury
was preventable.

This differs sharply with the responses provided by the remainder of
the survey sample: at the median, only 36% of respondents believe that
all injuries are preventable.

This is a striking contrast–a vast majority of organizations either
have not incorporated this message and process into their safety
programs, or fundamentally, the culture does not support the rhetoric
put out by safety and health professionals. Either way, for large
populations of most organizations, the unwritten mantra may be
“accidents happen.”

The Argument Against

Often, there is pushback against such a significant and absolutist
statement about how all injuries can be prevented. The argument of ten
moves immediately to extremes–“How can I prevent someone from
colliding with my vehicle?” or “How do you expect us to prevent
earthquakes and tornadoes?” for example.

The arguments continue down the line, suggesting the natural
degradation in materials that results in a failure of personal
protective equipment or mechanical failure resulting in injury cannot
be prevented. Detractors often having gone through a litany of
examples, unleash their final and presumably most influential argument
against the sentiment of all injuries being prevented: We are all
human, and we make mistakes. They claim that ‘all injuries are
preventable’ is unrealistic and insulting. They claim that the belief
in all injuries being prevented is a simple case of hindsight bias.

In some ways, the detractors are correct. It is not possible or
prudent for organizations to invest infinite sums of money to prevent
incidents from occurring, in particular, those caused by events
considered an “act of God.” Furthermore, there is a certain amount of
hindsight bias that creeps into the process naturally. We are, after
all, subject to the second law of thermodynamics–entropy always increases.

Perhaps this should put a nail in the coffin of this fundamental
belief, but the results speak for themselves. There is a strong
correlation between safety performance and this long-standing,
fundamental belief. That correlation and language are important. The
general belief, as written, doesn’t suggest that incidents will not
occur, or that natural disasters could be prevented. It does, however,
suggest that safeguards should be in place to ensure that employees
(and the public, and the environment) are protected accordingly. The
fundamental tenet then is not that incidents are preventable, but that
injuries are.

And let’s be clear, the language most certainly does not use the
term “accident.” Indeed, according to the Oxford-English dictionary
online, accident can be defined as “an event that happens by chance or
that is without apparent or deliberate cause” followed by its use in a
sentence: “The pregnancy was an accident.” Fundamentally, the word
accident implies a level of chance and lack of reason that cannot be
explained away. Though, it is fair to say that most elements described
as “accidents” still have root causes and means of protection not
entirely due to hindsight bias.

Why We Should Believe

Ultimately, the goal in any safety and health program is to reduce
risk, to increase risk controls or measures and to reduce making
decisions that involve unnecessary levels of risk.

Change comes in two forms–you can change the system (for instance,
by making a facility more structurally safe) or you can change the
individual’s approach to operating within the system. The latter is
why we should believe.

For two of these three influences, having a broad belief that
injuries are preventable can have a measurable influence on the actual
behavior outcomes.

If the organizational social norm is that not all injuries are
preventable, even individuals who do believe all injuries can be
prevented, and who are capable of making safer and wiser decisions,
may not. The norms provide a negative influence. It also reinforces
the behavioral shortfall for individuals who fundamentally don’t
believe. Furthermore, the organization may not emphasize the
consequences of the action, creating a more robust belief that
“accidents happen.”

To that end, a little belief may go a long way–showing that
individuals are able to act this way, are trained to act this way, and
are part of the collective belief system of the organization can drive
measurable behavior change.

Perhaps the fundamental debate around “all injuries being
preventable” is mere semantics. The potential outcome would indicate
even a cursory attempt at instilling this belief within the culture
could have measurable impact on the organization.

That said, it is worth noting that if an organization does truly
embrace the idea that all injuries can be prevented, significant
outcomes can be achieved. Take for example two critical additional
questions from the DuPont Safety Perception Survey™: What is the
priority you personally give to safety and what is the priority you
believe your colleagues give to safety? Among the highly successful
safe companies as defined earlier, of the 94 percent of employees who
said all injuries were preventable, 96 percent say safety is their
first priority. And 91 percent believe that their colleagues say the same.

Contrast this with the rest of the survey population, where the
median response for personal priority was 80 percent, and where
colleague priority was a shockingly low median of 54 percent.

In short, nearly a quarter of employees in most companies don’t have
safety as their first priority. Presumably, those are the employees
who would say, “when push comes to shove, another corporate objective
is more important than my safely returning home tonight.” And almost
half don’t trust their colleagues’ priorities.

If you take into consideration how much social norms influence
behavior, it’s clear that this lack of belief can lead to significant
and catastrophic outcomes.

Making it Real

Assuming that belief is the objective, there are three critical
areas that can move the needle.

Figure out where you stand

One cannot adjust the social norms without measuring them, and
identifying the problem areas. It is important to assess your current
situation and identify pockets of success as well as areas of concern.
High concentrations of negative perception can often be balanced by
finding equally large concentrations of individuals who are doing it
right. Blindly pushing a program without insight, however, is costly
and draconian. So conduct a cultural perception survey to benchmark
perception in your organization, help identify areas of concern and
prevent incidents before they occur. Then repeat the exercise every 18
months to two years to monitor progress.

Lead safety with integrity and purpose

Make sure your leaders understand the difference between managing
and leading, and make sure they understand their role in leading
safety with integrity. In order to achieve this, you’ll need coaching
and training, and you’ll have to emphasize some softer skills. This
means focusing on how your leaders speak, how they communicate with
employees and each other, and how to build an environment where there
is significantly more “near-miss” and “close call” than there are
incident investigations.

Develop a communication and training program that supports
long-term belief

In the end, a lot of this comes down to how you say what you need to
say. A common language, a strong brand image, and consistent and
persistent communications are critical. Your employees need to know
that no matter which manager they are working with, the system is
working for them. And they need to be able to report back the key
elements of your safety program. Most importantly, they should have
some form of “every injury is preventable” as part of their daily
mantra and work routine. This is not necessarily as simple as it
sounds, but the benefits of affective-based communications are not
only real, but measurably beneficial.

In Conclusion

Safety is not only a critical priority in any company, it should be
the first priority. The question is what are you doing today to drive
long-term sustainable success in the safety culture of your
organization? How will you commit to zero injuries? How will you drive
performance that is not satisfied until every constituent in contact
with your organization is going home safely?

So why is it the people in mission control kept pushing beyond the
limits to save three men in the vast distance between the earth and
our nearest satellite? Gene Krantz , the Flight Director of that
fateful flight of Apollo 13, shares the following anecdote in his biography:

“The term we used was ’workaround’—options, other ways of doing
things, solutions to problems that weren’t to be found in manuals and
schematics. These three astronauts were beyond our physical reach. But
not beyond the reach of human imagination, inventiveness, and a creed
that we all lived by: ‘Failure is not an option.’

Indeed, even as they extended beyond all the safety precautions and
engineered solutions they had at hand, it was the dedication of a
well-trained workforce working under the same mantra that found a way
and saved those men from harm.

And if they can do it from beyond the limits of our own planet
surely, we can achieve the same. We just need to believe we can.

Rich Eagles is a Regional Market Leader for DuPont Sustainable
Solutions (DSS). He provides strategic direction, oversight, and
management of large transformational efforts to help clients become
more efficient in Safety &Operations.